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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873925">in the cracks of light (i dreamed of you)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyVoldemort/pseuds/ProbablyVoldemort'>ProbablyVoldemort</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Troped Fics [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The 100 (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amnesia, Espionage, F/M, Speedrun Slowburn, Tattoos, but I don't, it'd be slowburn if i had more words, so like</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:15:08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,999</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29873925</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProbablyVoldemort/pseuds/ProbablyVoldemort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Echo loses her memory on a mission, and is left with a fake life she doesn't remember and a fake husband that doesn't seem as fake as he should be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Echo/Wells Jaha</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Troped Fics [21]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2247225</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>TROPED: Madness 2.0</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>in the cracks of light (i dreamed of you)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from Taylor Swift's Evermore.  Fic doesn't really have much to do with the song, except that I thought the lyrics I picked fit.</p><p>Troped Qualifying Round!<br/>Character: Echo!<br/>Theme: Romance!<br/>Trope 1: Amnesia AU!<br/>Trope 2: Tattoos!</p><p>Hope you enjoy!! :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Waking up in the hospital wasn’t exactly something new for Echo.  Injuries serious enough to warrant a hospital visit weren’t uncommon in the espionage business.</p><p>The new guy at her side was a shock, though, as was the fact that he was calling her Ash and stroking her cheek, smiling at her like they’d known each other longer than five minutes.</p><p>She put it down to her being out on some mission that the pounding in her head wasn’t letting her remember, and the new guy being given the short straw to come play dutiful boyfriend until they could extract her from the hospital.</p><p>She could play along.</p><p>And it was probably working in her favour that she couldn’t remember the new guy’s actual name.  Wouldn’t want to break his cover calling him the wrong thing.</p><p>“Ashley, can you look at me?”</p><p>She blinked back into the present, trying to dull the pounding in her head enough to concentrate on the doctor.  Ash was short for Ashley.  Good to know.</p><p>“Good,” the doctor said, smiling at her.  “My name is Dr. Tsing.  Can you tell me your name?”</p><p>She glanced over at the new guy, hoping he’d give her a hint but knowing there was no way he’d have made it in if he’d break like that.</p><p>“Ashley,” she said, and hoped they wouldn’t press her for her last name.</p><p>“Good,” Dr. Tsing said.  “Do you know why you’re here?”</p><p>Echo paused and then shook her head, instantly regretting it as the vibrations rattled her brain.</p><p>“That’s okay,” Dr. Tsing said.  “You hit your head pretty hard, so some memory issues are perfectly normal.”  She wrote something down on her notepad.  “Do you know who he is?”</p><p>Echo looked over at the new guy again, raking her pounding brain for his name, a name, any name.  She thought it might start with a W.  Wyatt?  Wade?  Winston?</p><p>“My boyfriend,” she hedged, because it was the safe option.  If he was here for an unplanned extraction, she probably wouldn’t know anyway.</p><p>“Husband,” he corrected, a bit too much emotion choked up in the word.  He was good, for a new guy, really selling it.</p><p>The husband angle was a little odd, though.  Too much backstory to make up on the spot, too many things that could get confusing.</p><p>“Husband,” she repeated, and turned back to the doctor.  “He’s my husband.”</p><p>The doctor nodded.  “And his name?”</p><p>Maybe if Echo’s head hadn’t been pounding, she might have been able to come up with something.  Maybe if she’d paid more attention when he’d been walking around during his orientation a few days ago, she might have been able to at least know his real name.</p><p>As it was, she didn’t even have a slimmer of hope at somehow magically guessing the name they’d assigned him for his cover.</p><p>He caught on before the doctor, and Echo made sure to make note of that in the review of his work she was most likely going to have to submit when she got back to HQ.</p><p>“Come on, Ash,” he said, squeezing her hand that she hadn’t realized he was holding and offering her a strained smile.  “You know my name.  It’s me.  Caleb.”</p><p>“Right,” she said.  “Caleb.  Obviously I know that.”</p><p>The doctor didn’t look convinced.  Echo would have questioned her ability to actually be a doctor if she <em>had</em> bought that.</p><p>“Ashley,” she asked, and Echo wondered how many times someone saying her name it would take for her to remember what she was even being Ashley for in the first place.  “What’s the date?”</p><p>Oh, wow.  That was a tricky one, wasn’t it?</p><p>New-guy-whose-name-was-definitely-not-Caleb-but-could-be-literally-anything-else had started on November 8<sup>th</sup>.  She knew that because it had been Raven’s birthday, and they’d had cake.</p><p>That had been a couple days ago.  And then there was however long it had taken to get this Ashley assignment, be shipped out on it, and then hit her head, or whatever had actusally happened.</p><p>“Mid-November?” she guessed, glancing at the new guy—Caleb.  She should just call him Caleb.  “The last few days are a little fuzzy.  It’s definitely 2016, though.”</p><p>Not-Caleb and Dr. Tsing stared at her in a way she couldn’t quite decipher.  She could tell, though, that something in her answer had been drastically wrong.</p><p>“What?” she asked, glancing between them.  “What is it?”</p><p>The door to her room opened then, a bustling blonde woman coming in.</p><p>“Someone paged for a neuro consult?” she asked, and then her gaze landed on Echo, a smile stretching across her face.  “Ashley, hi!  Glad to see you’re awake!”</p><p>“Thanks,” Echo said, forcing her gaze away from Not-Caleb’s face.  “I think something’s wrong, though, doctor.”</p><p>The neuro consult’s smile faltered.  “Okay,” she said, stepping closer to the bed.  “Let’s start with an easy one then.  Who am I?”</p><p>Echo’s gaze jumped back to Not-Caleb’s face for a moment.  “The neuro consult?”</p><p>“Clarke,” Not-Caleb said.  His voice was a little too desperate, a little too pleading.  “Clarke, she thinks it’s 2016.”</p><p>“Oh,” the neuro consult—Clarke—said, and Echo would later commend her ability to keep her cool.  “Okay.  Well, allow me to reintroduce myself, then.  Clarke Griffin.  I’m gonna run some tests okay, Ashley?”</p><p>“No,” Echo said, even though she was supposed to just go with the flow to get out as soon as possible.  “No.  Not until you tell me what’s wrong.  Why is it weird that I think it’s 2016?”</p><p>Clarke looked like she didn’t want to actually answer, so she turned her gaze on Not-Caleb again, trying to tell him with her eyes that he’d be getting a bad performance review if he kept letting her flounder.</p><p>“It’s 2021, Ash,” Not-Caleb told her, and Echo felt her world drop out from under her.</p><p> </p><p>They kept her in the hospital for ten days, running tests.</p><p>She learned her name was Ashley O’Dell, that she’d married Caleb in early 2017, about six months before moving to Arkadia.  Dr. Clarke Griffin was their next door neighbour, hence the thought that her name would be an easy question.  Ashley worked as a fitness instructor, and Caleb worked for the town paper.</p><p>She also learned that she’d gotten a tattoo at some point, a swirling pattern of snowflakes wrapping around the side of her ribs.  She’d gotten another, too, a stylized arrow wrapping around her ring finger.</p><p>She discovered that tattoo while Not-Caleb was out doing whatever he did when he wasn’t hanging around in her hospital room, and was staring at her hand when Clarke came in to run her neuro tests.</p><p>“Do you remember getting that?” she asked, nodding at the tattoo, and Echo shook her head.  “You and Caleb got matching ones for your anniversary last year.  You kept losing your ring, so you guys decided to get them tattooed on so you wouldn’t.”  She put down her papers on the table next to Echo’s bed, shrugging and giving a little laugh.  “I still don’t get why you chose arrows, though.  You and Caleb would never say.  I’m guessing an inside joke?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Echo said softly, still staring down at the tattoo.  “It is.”</p><p>She assumed it was, at least.  The bow and arrow was her specialty, and would bet that if she’d been in Arkadia for four years, she wouldn’t have gotten much practice in.</p><p>The arrow wasn’t surprising.  The snowflakes on her ribs were a bit more surprising, but there was probably a reason for them.</p><p>It was the placement of the arrow that shocked her, and the fact that she and her fake husband had apparently decided to get matching wedding band tattoos for their last fake anniversary.</p><p>There were a lot of things she didn’t understand, and she wasn’t getting any answers from Not-Caleb while she was trapped in this hospital room with doctors and nurses running in and out at all hours of the day.</p><p>Her biggest question, really, was what kind of mission were they on that they’d been here for four years?</p><p> </p><p>They kept her there until she and Not-Caleb managed to argue the doctors into releasing her.  Clarke said her memory would most likely come back with time, as her concussion healed.  Not-Caleb argued that she could spend that time at home.  Echo remembered something she’d heard about amnesia before, and argued that being home would give her more opportunities to be reminded of things.  The fact that her brain doctor lived right next door just seemed to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, and she was free.</p><p> </p><p>The sunlight was too bright even from behind her sunglasses as Echo stepped out of the car.  She stood there, door still wide open, as she stared up at a house she didn’t recognize.</p><p>If she’d been holding out hope that just being here, at the home she couldn’t remember, would be enough to bring back her memory, she was wrong.</p><p>She heard the driver’s door shut, and then Not-Caleb was in front of her, staring at her with sad, hopeful eyes, and she sighed as she shook her head.</p><p>“Let’s head inside,” he told her, nodding towards the front door.</p><p>There was something in his tone she couldn’t quite name, something that probably had to do with the reason behind their matching tattoos, but there was something else in his tone, too, something she could recognize.  Even though she’d never heard him speak before she woke up in the hospital, it was the tone of an agent trying to get another into a situation where they could update said agent on the mission.</p><p>So she followed him into the house, both because she needed answers and because it looked like they lived in the kind of neighbourhood where the neighbours would come over to talk if she stood outside too long, and her head hurt too much to even attempt to navigate that kind of situation.</p><p>The door closed behind them, and she took a cursory glance around the unfamiliar house before turning to Not-Caleb, raising a brow.</p><p>“Fuck, Echo,” he said, seeming to deflate a little.  He was staring at her in a way she couldn’t quite understand.  “You really don’t remember anything?”</p><p>“Nope,” Echo sighed, taking the cue of her real name that the house was safe to talk in.  “Where’s the kitchen?  I need a drink.”</p><p>“You can’t drink with a concussion,” he reminded her, but was already heading through the house.</p><p>“I know that.”  She followed him, taking in the knick-knacks and the photographs on the walls, smiling evidence of a life she couldn’t remember.  “It doesn’t have to be alcohol.  I’m just thirsty.”</p><p>She hopped up on a bar stool as Not-Caleb moved through the kitchen, pouring some juice into a couple of glasses.</p><p>“So, Caleb,” she said, drumming her fingers on the counter.  “I guess I’ll start with an easy question.  What <em>is</em> the mission?”</p><p>“Echo,” Not-Caleb sighed, passing her a glass before leaning back on the opposite counter, crossing his arms over his chest.  “The house is safe.  You don’t have to call me Caleb.”</p><p>Echo snorted, shaking her head as she sipped at her juice.  “Right,” she agreed slowly.  “Except in my mind, you only started at the agency, like, a week ago, and I haven’t learned your name yet, so Caleb’s all I’ve got.”</p><p>Not-Caleb stared at her for a long minute, that unreadable look on his face again.  Echo swallowed, looking down and playing with her glass.</p><p>“You don’t—” he started, and then cut himself off.  She looked up at him again.  “You don’t remember me?  At all?”</p><p>“I mean, I know you’re with the agency,” Echo said, shrugging apologetically.  “But that’s about it.  Sorry.”</p><p>“Wow.”  He nodded, reaching up and scrubbing a hand over his face.  “Okay.  I guess I’ll start at the beginning.”  He dropped his hand, offering her a shaky smile.  “I’m Wells.  Wells Jaha.”</p><p>“Wells,” she repeated, and the name tasted familiar on her tongue.  She smiled back.  “Nice to finally meet you.”</p><p>His smile wavered.  “Yeah,” he agreed, in a way that made Echo think that he didn’t actually agree.  Not that she blamed him.  Or actually agreed herself.  She’d definitely prefer to not have lost the last almost four plus years of her life.</p><p>Wells cleared his throat, shifting.  “So,” he said.  “Hate to break it to you, but we’re not actually here on a mission.  We were on a different mission together, and we were made.”  He smiled wryly at her, spreading his arms wide.  “Welcome to witness protection.”</p><p> </p><p>It went like this:</p><p>Wells had joined the agency in November 2016.  As per agency policy, he would be paired with other agents for the first year of his career.  Everything was going well, until August 2017.</p><p>They were on a mission infiltrating Mount Weather.  Nothing out of the ordinary, because the agency went up against the Mountain all the time.</p><p>Except this time, things went south.</p><p>Wells didn’t know all the details, but something had gone wrong.  One minute they were circulating a fancy party, the next they were being dragged into the back of cars with bags over their heads.</p><p>They got out, obviously.  The extraction team did its job and got them back to HQ.</p><p>But they got word from their people on the inside.  Cage Wallace had Echo and Wells’ faces, and he was out for blood.  Everyone in the Mountain knew who they were.  Everyone in the Mountain was ordered to take them down.</p><p>So they were put into witness protection.  Echo had argued it, apparently, swearing that they could do more good on the outside.</p><p>But the agency couldn’t risk sending them on missions.  The Mountain had eyes and ears everywhere.  Someone would recognize them, no matter how well disguised they were.  They were a liability, so they were sent to the middle of nowhere, to a town where nothing happened and no one from the Mountain would even think of looking for them.</p><p>A place they were banished to until the Mountain was taken down, or they were otherwise safe to come out.</p><p>That, if you’d lost track, was in of 2017.  Now, it was March of 2021.</p><p>Three years and seven months in Arkadia.</p><p> </p><p>She’d gone to bed after they’d reached that part in Wells’ summary of her missing time.  It was partially because her brain was pounding too much for her to make any sense of anything he was telling her, and partially because that was just…a lot.</p><p>Her head didn’t hurt as much when she woke up hours later, the sunset shining in through the window.</p><p>She lay in bed for a while longer, staring up at the ceiling and trying to process everything she’d been told.</p><p>They’d been made.  She didn’t know if she’d previously had more information on how that’d happened, but she doubted it.  After the better part of four years in witness protection with him, she would’ve shared it with Wells long before now.  She’d be shocked if they didn’t have a hidden evidence stash somewhere, a stack of leads they worked through in the dead of night.</p><p>But that wasn’t the point right now.  She could look over their evidence stash once her brain didn’t feel like it was dying.</p><p>The point was that this wasn’t what she’d thought.  She wasn’t stuck here in Arkadia on some deep cover mission.  She was stuck her in Arkadia until the rest of the agency took down the Mountain.</p><p>Which basically meant she was stuck in Arkadia indefinitely.</p><p>She really needed to ask Wells for more details on what happened after they were placed here.  All she knew was that last year, on their fake anniversary, they’d gotten very real, very sentimental, very matching tattoos, and that a few weeks ago, she’d fallen off the ladder while cleaning out their gutters, hit her head, and lost the last few years of her life.</p><p>Now, Echo had been training as a spy for years.  And she was good at it.  Apparently not good enough to not be betrayed or made or whatever had gotten her stuck in Arkadia in the first place, but she didn’t have enough details to say whether that was actually her fault or not.</p><p>The point was, you didn’t get as far in espionage as Echo had without noticing things.</p><p>Which was why she was making a mental list as she headed towards the ensuite.</p><p>There were the stacks of books on both tables, one on each side of the bed, a pair of glasses folded up on top of the one on the side opposite to that which Echo had instinctively fallen asleep in.  Unless her eyesight had been shot, and the fact that nothing was blurry was leading her to believe that it hadn’t, they were Wells’.</p><p>There were also two dressers in the room, a few brightly patterned ties hanging from the knobs of one.  There were more pictures on the walls, herself and Wells smiling and holding onto each other.</p><p>She made it into the ensuite.  There were two toothbrushes in the holder, two tubes of toothpaste on the counter.  One was the brand and flavour she liked, the other one she hadn’t tried before.  There were two types of shampoo and bodywash in the shower, two razors, two cans of shaving cream.  She didn’t look in the drawers, but she would have bet there would be two of everything, neatly tucked into two, matching drawers.</p><p>She stared down at her hand as she sat on the toilet, eyes tracing the lines of the tattoo on her finger.</p><p>There were way more clues than she needed, really.</p><p>And they were all pointing to one fairly obvious conclusion.</p><p> </p><p>Wells was sitting at the table when she walked into the dining room, head in his hands propped up by his elbows, a seemingly untouched plate of food next to him.</p><p>“Hey,” she said softly, and he jumped, his head jerking up as he stared at her with wide eyes.  “Sorry.”</p><p>“No,” he said, shaking his head.  “It’s fine.  How are you doing?”</p><p>Echo shrugged.  “Head’s still sore but not too bad,” she told him.  “I’m hungry, though.”</p><p>Wells was scrambling towards the kitchen before she could insist she could grab her own food, and she took a seat at the table, still staring at the arrow on her finger.</p><p>“It’s lasagne,” Wells said, sliding a plate in front of her before retaking his own seat.  “Everyone’s been cooking us stuff and I’ve just been reheating them.”</p><p>“Thanks.”  Echo dug her fork into the lasagne, wondering but not wanting to ask who <em>everyone</em> was.</p><p>They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Echo couldn’t keep in the question that had been trying to burst out almost since she’d woken up in the hospital.</p><p>“When did this stop being fake?”</p><p>Maybe she should have looked over at Wells before asking, because, when she did look up at him, it was because he was choking on his mouthful of lasagne.</p><p>“Sorry,” she added, once he’d stopped coughing.  “Probably could’ve timed that better.”</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Wells said, and Echo wondered whether he normally said that this much.  He dragged a hand across his face, and she wondered whether he normally looked this tired, too.  She guessed that he didn’t, if the pictures around their house was any indication.  “What, um.  What makes you think that?”</p><p>Echo raised an eyebrow at him.  “Would you like me to start with the tattoo wedding rings?” she asked.  “Or maybe the fact that we definitely share a bed, despite having a second in a guest room and no mission related reasons to do so?”</p><p>Wells stared at her for a minute later before sighing.  “Okay,” he said, dropping his fork back onto his half-eaten plate.  “I should probably start at the beginning, then.”</p><p> </p><p>Caleb and Ashley O’Dell were married on April 25<sup>th</sup>, 2017, but they didn’t spawn into existence until Echo and Wells moved to Arkadia in October.  Their covers had been blown in August, but the agency spent a couple months doing damage control and finding a town secluded and small enough for them to disappear into.  Caleb and Ashley were chosen as a cover because no one would suspect a couple of newlyweds moving to a new town of being something other than just that.</p><p>It took them a few months to settle into their lives.  They looked over their shoulders and kept go bags under the bed and in every closet, ready to run at any moment.</p><p>And then they got used to it.  They made friends.  They settled into their jobs.  They started making plans.  They had a stash of research and evidence behind a false picture in the basement that they still poured over most nights, sure, but they were getting used to the idea that they would be in Arkadia for a while.</p><p>When their first anniversary of being stuck in town hit, they celebrated by getting wasted alone in their house and waking up naked in bed together.</p><p>Wells swore it started out as friends with benefits.  They were married, after all, and Arkadia was a small town.  While they’d been able to secretly hook up with tourists occasionally, they couldn’t risk their blissfully married status to try for anything more than one night stands with complete strangers.</p><p>So they decided to make it more than a one time thing.  Simple.  Easy.  No strings attached.  It was convenient now, and they’d break it off when they went back to their real lives.</p><p>“I fell first,” Wells said, staring down at the cup of tea he’d gotten at some point during the story.  His voice was soft, far away.  “I don’t remember when, exactly, but little things just kept building up, and then one day it just hit me.”  She watched him swallow, still not looking up at her.  “I love you.”</p><p>She, apparently, took a little longer.  He told her, she freaked out a bit—which, honestly, it would have shocked her more if she hadn’t—they went on a break, he was miserable for a few weeks.  Something about the break made her realize she was in love with him, too—he was never sure what it was, exactly—and they got back together, and the rest was history.</p><p>Their research was in the basement, but every day they accepted a little bit more that they were going to be in Arkadia for a while.  Leaving meant risking lives.  Their lives.  The lives of their fellow agents.  The lives of innocent bystanders.  The Mountain was too big, too intertwined with everything for the agency to take them down anytime soon.</p><p>So they stayed in Arkadia.  They met with their contacts, some of the few people who knew where they lived, who knew their new identities.  They lived as Ashley and Caleb in the public, and as Echo and Wells in private, loved each other as both.</p><p>And they got used to living this life.  She taught her classes at the gym, and Wells wrote his articles for the paper, and they occasionally did work on the research end of missions that the agency could risk sending them.</p><p>Life in Arkadia, according to Wells, wasn’t something either of them had ever expected or really wanted, but they got used to it.  It was nice, and they had each other.</p><p>Like Clarke had said, they’d gotten the tattoos last year, on Caleb and Ashley’s anniversary.  Echo did have a habit of forgetting to put her ring back on—she’d still somehow never gotten used to wearing it—so that was a good enough excuse to give to everyone else.  To themselves, it was the wedding they’d never actually gotten, the promise to entwine their lives together forever, for better or worse, for espionage or witness protection.</p><p>It was honestly a lot to take in, over lasagne and tea and the last of the fading light of the setting sun.  Even though she’d already come to the conclusion that they’d been a thing, that the tattoos at the very least pointed to something bigger than just <em>a thing</em>, it was still a lot to process.</p><p>She was missing four and a half years of her life.  That was a long fucking time.  She had a whole life, a life with Wells.  It was a fake life, but it wasn’t.</p><p>There was a part of her that didn’t want to believe it.  This was a new training exercise, a new scenario they were testing people in.  It wasn’t real.  She wasn’t missing any time.  At any moment, someone was going to come out and tell her whether she passed or failed, and she was going to move on with her life.</p><p>But a bigger part of her knew that wasn’t true.  Everything Wells had told her, everything she’d learned since waking up, it just felt <em>right</em>.  She couldn’t explain how, but deep inside her, she knew it was the truth.</p><p>There was something about Wells, something about his presence that she just innately trusted, that made her think that maybe everything about this situation would work itself out.</p><p>Her head was pounding again by the time they finished talking, so she went to bed, a thousand things swirling around in her mind.  Wells walked up the stairs with her, hovering in the doorway of their room for a few long moments before grabbing a change of clothes and retreating to the guest room.</p><p>Before now, she’d only slept in the hospital, other than crashing as soon as her head hit the pillow earlier in the day.</p><p>Now, though, she tossed and turned.  Something was off.  The bed was too big, too empty, too cold.</p><p>She pushed the thoughts away, curled in on herself, and tried not to think about the why.</p><p> </p><p>Her memories came back in bits and pieces.  She remembered her favourite dish at the local restaurant.  She remembered the name of a client she couldn’t remember meeting.  She remembered how Wells took his coffee.  She remembered where they kept the good china when Wells’ “cousin Ty” came to stay with them for a weekend—Nick was played by Nathan Miller, an agent Echo had worked with occasionally and one of their contacts.  They didn’t <em>need</em> the good china, but they decided to use it, in celebration of her remembering.</p><p>They were all little things, inconsequential, but she remembered more and more of them as time went on.</p><p>Clarke told her not to get her hopes up.  She might never remember everything, or she might remember everything once her concussion healed.  But they did exercises and she tried so, so hard, and it worked.  Little bits of random information still counted as working.</p><p>It went like that for weeks.  After Miller’s check in came Raven’s two weeks later.  “Amy” was one of Ashley’s clients.  She came to town every two weeks for meetings and her private kickboxing lessons.</p><p>Seeing Raven was nice.  Echo’s head hadn’t healed enough to really be doing a lot of the physical part of her job, but she was working on training without doing the moves herself.  So she made sure to come in for Raven’s private lessons, made sure to take them to one of the private rooms.</p><p>Raven’s check-ins were a spot of normalcy.  Echo had known Raven since the academy.  She was older than she pictured her in her head.  It wasn’t super noticeable, but she had a different haircut, held herself a littler differently.  She could get another perspective on everything she’d forgotten about.  Her story was more the same as Wells’, which she hadn’t doubted, but it was nice to have it backed up.</p><p>So she lived.  She went to work.  She did her check-ins with the agency.  She poured over evidence in the basement.  She tried to remember.  She got to know Wells again.</p><p>And she dreamed.</p><p> </p><p>The dreams had started when she was in the hospital, but she hadn’t paid them much time.  As her head healed, they came more and more frequently.</p><p>She couldn’t remember them when she woke, but something in her soul told her they were about Wells, about their life.  They were memories, bleeding through from wherever they’d been hidden away in her mind.</p><p>The dreams left her with a warm feeling bubbling in her chest, left her reaching out to the empty side of the bed, searching for a presence she knew deep in her bones should be there and only finding cold sheets.</p><p> </p><p>It didn’t surprise Echo in the least that she’d fallen in love with Wells in a life she couldn’t remember.</p><p>Maybe it was feelings she couldn’t remember seeping into her perception, but she liked him.  He was funny and he always had a cup of coffee ready for her in the morning, exactly how she liked it.  He never once complained about sleeping in the guest room, or that she couldn’t remember really anything about him.  She knew that if the situation had been reversed, there was no way she wouldn’t have lost her cool by now.  But Wells was just full of this endless patience that she was sure she’d found frustrating in certain situations—like their indefinite banishment to witness protection—but that she was also sure was something that led to her falling in love with him the first time around.</p><p>It was definitely something that was contributing to similar feelings this time.</p><p>More often than not when she was with Wells or she was thinking about Wells, she found herself absently tracing her fingers over the arrow tattoo on her finger.  And, more often than not, she found her eyes drawn to his hands, watching him do the same, fingers brushing over dark lines that promised forever.</p><p> </p><p>It only took a few weeks for Echo to determine that, yes, she was definitely into Wells.  She couldn’t tell him that, though, couldn’t act on it, because she still couldn’t remember.  It wouldn’t be fair to him, to try to pursue something, when she knew how in love with her he was and when she knew that, as much as she, for lack of a better term, <em>like-liked</em> him, it was nothing compared to that, nothing compared to how much she must have loved him before, nothing compared to how much he deserved to be loved.</p><p>So she held onto her feelings, and she doubled down on her memory exercises, and she hoped beyond anything that she’d just <em>remember</em>.</p><p>She just wanted to remember.</p><p>Was that too much to ask?</p><p> </p><p>There was really nothing really remarkable about the day.  It was a few days before their “anniversary,” and she’d just gotten out of the shower after work.  Clarke had recently cleared her for light duty, and a month of not doing anything active really meant she was sweating a lot more than she usually would for the amount of activity she was doing.</p><p>She was dressed down, since they didn’t have plans to go anywhere for the night, in leggings and a tank top, still towelling off her hair as she came down the stairs.</p><p>The smell hit her just before she came into the kitchen, a wafting aroma of garlic and seasoning from a chicken and vegetable dish that Wells knew she loved.</p><p>He hadn’t made it since before the accident.</p><p>Clarke would later say it was probably the smell that triggered it, brought the memory rushing back.  It wasn’t just a memory of the meal this time, of the smell and the taste.</p><p>It was more.</p><p>She let it sink in for a moment, let the feelings and emotions that came with the memory wash over her, and then she stepped into the kitchen.</p><p>“Hey,” Wells said, glancing up from his phone from where she was leaning against the fridge.  “I’m making this chicken thing.  You used to love it, and I just thought—”</p><p>She didn’t find out what he’d been thinking, as she’d already crossed the room, cupping his cheek as she kissed him.</p><p>His arms wrapped around her waist, tugging her closer, and <em>fuck</em> she missed this, she missed <em>him</em>.</p><p>And then he was pulling back, breathing heavily as he pressed their foreheads together.  He didn’t move away, didn’t push her away, but she didn’t need her memories to know that there was no way she’d have been able to do that without talking about it first.</p><p>Wells liked to talk about things.  He liked to plan and organize and run through every possible scenario until he was ready for anything.</p><p>And, really, even if talking about things hadn’t been ingrained in who Wells was as a person, Echo supposed anyone wouldn’t have just gone with it if their amnesiac wife who couldn’t even remember them suddenly kissed them out of nowhere.</p><p>“What?” was all Wells managed to say, his voice rough and deep and delicious.</p><p>Echo swallowed heavily, her heart in her throat for reasons she didn’t understand.</p><p>“You made me this,” she said, brushing her thumb across his cheek.  “We’d broken up because you said you loved me, and we weren’t really talking or interacting.  But then I got home from work, and you were making this.  It’s my favourite, and you knew that.  We weren’t talking, but you made my favourite because it was my birthday and you loved me.”  She laughed softly, shaking her head.  “That’s when I figured out that I loved you, too.  I never told you, though, because it would’ve made me sound like a sap.”</p><p>“It does,” Wells whispered, and she could hear the thickness in his voice, even as he attempted a laugh.  “You <em>are </em>a sap.”</p><p>Echo laughed too, pulling back so she could see him.  He stared at her, eyes wide and full of hope that maybe this was it, that maybe she’d gotten her memories back.</p><p>“I still don’t remember everything,” she told him.  “And I can’t tell you I’m in love with you.  But I <em>am</em> falling, and I do know that it won’t take too much longer for me to fully be there again, even if I never get any other memories back.”  She dropped her hand from his cheek, pulling one of his from her waist so she could brush her fingers over the arrow of their promise.  “I’m in this for the long haul, Wells.  You and me.  Echo and Wells, or Ashley and Caleb, I’m in this.  Memories or otherwise.”</p><p>Wells stared at her for another long moment.  She could see the tears in his eyes and wondered whether she’d said something wrong, if she’d miscalculated something.  She wasn’t good at talking about her feelings, talking about herself.  Throwing herself into a cover she could do, but talking about herself was harder.  Putting herself out there, putting her <em>heart</em> out there, that was harder.</p><p>But then Wells was tugging her even closer against him, threading his hand into her hair and kissing her like his life depended on it, like this was the only thing he wanted to do for the rest of her life, and all her worries melted away.  He whispered, <em>“I love you</em>,” against her lips, again and again, so many times that the words blended together, and it sent a thrill through her, a wild, giddy excitement that she couldn’t remember ever feeling with anyone else.</p><p>And Echo realized that, as much as she wanted her memories back, she’d be okay if they never returned, if all she ever remembered from the last four years of her life were bits and pieces.  She’d be okay if it was never safe for them to get out of Arkadia, to go back to the lives they’d had before.</p><p>Because she still had Wells.</p><p>She still had this.</p><p>She still had them.</p><p>And that was all she needed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Hope you enjoyed!</p><p>Comments and kudos bring me joy!</p><p>Check out troped-fanfic-challenge on Tumblr for more info on the event and how to vote!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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